It was spring again.

The snow had faded away like a dream, and we were awakened, so to speak, by the sudden chirping of robins in our back garden.

Marvellous transformation of snowdrifts into lilacs, wondrous miracle of the unfolding leaf! We read in the Holy Book how our Saviour, at the marriage-feast, changed the water into wine; we pause and wonder; but every hour a greater miracle is wrought at our very feet, if we have but eyes to see it.
I had now been a year at Rivermouth.

If you do not know what sort of boy I was, it is not because I haven't been frank with you.

Of my progress at school I say little; for this is a story, pure and simple, and not a treatise on education.